This dissertation presents a biographical study of Philip Murray (1886-1952) who was one of
America's premier labour leaders of the twentieth century. The work examines the major
influences and historical events that shaped Murray's career. The thesis argues that Murray's
career has been unfairly dismissed.
It explains how the enduring effects of his formative years in Lanarkshire, Scotland,
shaped his character as a trade unionist. It examines his early role as an official of the United
Mineworkers of America (UMW A) in the 1920s and 1930s; his leadership of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO) during the stormy era of its organising drive of America's
industrial workers and of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC); and his
subsequent presidency of both the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and the CIO
during and after the Second World war. Murray's Catholicism and his relationship with
Communists occupy a central position in the historical narrative.
This thesis contends that Murray's motivations were not based on the crude antiCommunism
of the McCat1hyism period following his death, and it seeks to prove the
hypothesis that, in spite of his purging of the left-led unions inside the CIO, ironically,
Murray throughout his life consistently strove to adhere to his class consciousness and uphold
his convictions as a sincere advocate for labour's adversarial role inside capitalism. This
thesis questions Murray's purported belief in class collaboration, as advocated in the papal
encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragessimo Anno (1931), and argues that, even
if Murray agreed with the sentiments of the encyclicals' support and sympathy for the
rights of workers and trade unions, he was never naive enough to reject the social and
political reality of class struggle as an intrinsic, or motive, force in capitalist society.